26 PALESTINE UNVEILED
there, from Philistine times to those of Allenby, I had
another note to read.
Dead ahead lay a large city, shimmering white—
Ramleh, with its strange ancient tower, the red-brick
buildings of the Royal Air Force barracks and hangars,
beside it. A last note from the pilot.
" Lydda aerodrome ahead. That is Ramleh. Sup-
posed to be Arimathea—doubtful/' I read. " Ruined
tower is that of the Forty Martyrs/'
The Forty Martyrs meant nothing to me, I had
never heard of them, but the ruined building marks
the church which Sir John Mandeville, so we read,
visited in the fourteenth century, and, if Ramleh was
Arimathea, then here was a link with my own West
Country, with Glastonbury, where, so legend says,
Joseph of Arimathea founded the first Christian
Church in Britain.
Just beyond the olive-groves and orchards were lines
of camps, where some of the British garrison is con-
centrated—the men who are carrying on the duties
which their forebears so honourably commenced and
so dishonourably abandoned in the days of the Crusades.
The engines died, and the same gentle soughing
which had so scared me over an hour before back at
Port Said, rose like a sigh as we glided down to land
on the Lydda field. It was quickly evident that things
were not quiet and peaceful in the Holy Land; the
aerodrome was partly charred ruins, though workmen
were hard at it repairing the damage which the Arabs
caused when they set fire to the buildings.
A lot of armed men lounged about—men who wore
blue puggarees round their sun-helmets, and as I got